Jennifer Carbajal May 11, 1988 - .........

A friend of mine has been feeding me books from the Anne of Green Gables series. In each book she would put tasks for me to do when I came to a certain part of the book. This act was one of the many saving graces during my depression. It gave me something to do, something to look forward to, something to make me feel like I was worth all the time that was put into it. I am now on the third book and I am enjoying doing all the little tasks in between my reading. The other day I was given this task " Go find a graveyard, the older the better, and take a journal and sit. Walk around and find three different graves that stick out to you. Journal about why they mean something to you."
I fulfilled this task the other day. And it was a very interesting experience. Josh took me. He and I had planned to hang out Sunday after church and he had left it up to me to decide what we would do. I was sure he was going to protest. Or tell me that I was weird and had issues. But he didn't. So we went to the Olive Lawn Memorial Cemetery by my house. It was a small cemetery. Not very old. But just being there felt like being part of history. But it felt like time stopped while we were there. We wondered around in silence at first. Kind of just taking in the scene before us. It was a beautiful day. The sun was out, but it wasn't too hot. There was a light breeze in the air. And the conversation was poetic. Josh and I set out to find the oldest grave there. We might have missed an older one, but we got as far back as 1851...
1851: What was going on then? How did people dress? It's amazing how much time has passed since then! So many suns and moons have passed over that grave since it was placed there. 1851. That was 100 years before my father's was born. Time...it's such a strange thing to fathom. You can't capture it. Sure you can take picture, record, post on facebook. but nothing can ever be like the real thing. No matter how much we try to recreate a moment in time, it will always be perfect when and how it happens.
The second grave I found was heartbreaking. It was a child that was born in 1947 and died in 1947. how hard would that be? To bring a child into the worked and have it taken away? Did they baby pass unexpectedly? did the parents know it was coming? Sometimes i wonder if that will happen to me. I don't know if I want to have kids but if I do I hope that everything turns out alright. I once had to play a character who miscarried. I just couldn't identify with that kind of pain. How hard it must have been for those parents to bury their child. All the time they spent waiting for their baby was shattered.
The most interesting thing that I found was a plaque on a wall in the cemetery. There were two names. One of them had a birth date and a death date under it. The other name had a birth date and then a dash. He hadn't died yet. I started to wonder what it must be like to see your name on a plaque knowing that the cemetery was just waiting to put the other date on it. It was a chilling thought. Then I started to think about how some people fear death. As soon as I thought that Josh asked me, "If you had a chance to know how you were going to die, would you want to know?" I had to think about this for a long time. On the one hand it would be nice to know because then I wouldn't be afraid to do anything because I could take chances and know that I wouldn't die. On the other hand, I would live in fear of that thing and avoid it at all costs. It might become a subconscious phobia or something like that. I decided that I wouldn't want to know. Because I wanted to be free. I wouldn't want to have anything hanging over my head for the rest of my life. I don't think I would want to know my expiration date. I would rather have the date of my birth known and have that dash hanging over my head, but I will not fear it.
That's what I learned from this escapade. Death is final, but it is beautiful. Walking around that cemetery was such a cool experience. Josh and I had a deep conversation about lots of things. Standing so close to death, literally standing there, put things into perspective.